Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 8599 Location: Fingerlakes - NY usa
Sysco is a huge food service provider. Much of what you get in restaurants now likely comes from them, and much of what they provide is pre-cooked or prepared food. It's like paying someone to heat up some Schwans' frozen meals for you and clean up your mess. When places aren't making their own stuff, you end up with things like Sodium Benzoate and HFCS. Sodium Benzoate is that stuff that makes us hack and cough up crap after eating a saucy dish.
Basically most non fast food places have become just like fast food with the exception of holding times depending on product. When it comes to a burger, it may be the difference of having the burger cooked to order, or having one made in the last 30m. On the other hand, a lot of fast food places tend to use 100% pure beef while the ingredients in the Sysco burger patties I'm familiar with are not just beef. It's not really the patty that's the problem though: the really bad ingredients are in the buns and sauces.
Our brains, and muscles run on sugar and oxygen. Fat in our diet also gives us energy and helps regulate hormones related to obesity. Calorie restriction diets are a major cause of obesity. We crave these things for a reason. When I abstained from salt, I would get frequent strep throat. Salt is likewise used to prevent / treat bacterial infections even in fresh water fish. We use much of the same antibiotics as fresh water fish and our blood should have the salinity of the ocean. We're often deprived of natural amounts of salt in meat because of Kosher regulations requiring the bleeding of animals, and now you see on these cooking shows they teach us to salt proteins (basically replacing what they took out).
Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 8599 Location: Fingerlakes - NY usa
I've had some people go nuts over some foods I've made; like chicken wings for example. Now some places would use sauce with free glutamate (like MSG) in it. I put honey in my most common hot sauce which most people love and say are the best they've had. It's too bad that Glutamate (can cause craving of starch) is so overlooked while calories (what satisfies and fills us) is wrongly attacked.
